Thinking Pink and Thinking Green...

Here's a new why-I-haven't-blogged-recently excuse: the dog ate my homework...no, the dog ate my laptop...no, I can't decide which and what to write about so I just won't write anything. But this could go on for a very long time, so I'm grabbing the proverbial bull by the horns (as if) and writing Two Blog Posts In One....!

Post, The First: a disclaimer is required. I am very pro women, breasts, healthy women, healthy women with breasts and all that is required to keep them that way. I also, as you may recall, lost my best friend to breast cancer. Just saying that makes it sound like she went out in the cancer woods one day and never came home. Which isn't the case at all. She died, people, she died. Ten years after they cut off both her breasts. Okay, have I disclaimed enough to not infuriate all tender souls when I say:

I hate this bullshitty Pink for Breast Cancer month.

It has become a huge marketing ploy. Every company out there has done a pink something or other, which is now being advertised as the Must Have and by-the-way, we are giving .001 percent of our profit on each item to breast cancer research. And the magazines have jumped on the bandwagon. Pages and pages of glossy pink this and pink that. If we can make it in pink, hey, do it and jam it on the suckers in October, which is National Breast Cancer month. Just in time for the lead up to orange and black for National Halloween Month. And green and brown and orange for National Thanksgiving Month. And the all-time favorite, red and green for National Christmas Month. With a soupcon of blue and white for Chanukah and red, green andyellow for Kwanza Months.

Part of my anger is that I hate pink. I hate that pink is supposed to be so girly. I hate that I'm supposed to want everything in pink. I hate that young girls in my family are brainwashed into loveloveloving pink. Even Kayla, whose favorite color has always been black, lives in a Pepto Bismal colored room. Pink is insipid. Pink is but a pale washed out form of red. I hate that when men want to humiliate other men, they put them in pink. Pink is--hey, did you know that in former times pink was the boy's color; it was considered, as a derivative of red, too 'Hot' a color for girls. But I digress...

I am all in favor of corporations major and minor giving large chunks of change to breast cancer research. And I can understand their desire to have people know and appreciate their good works. But wouldn't a simple line of print on the label do? I can't stand they they're making money not only from our pain, but from our good nature and need to fit in (see me! I'm wearing a pink whatever. I'm in favor of women keeping their breasts!)

Pink camo T-shirts? I ask you--what jungle war would they be worn in? Or should they be given to our female soldiers, just to kinda mark 'em in the field? And pink soup cans--I see all those rows of washed out Campbell's soup and all I can think is, "blech! how long have they been sitting in the barn?"

I have quite worn myself out with that rant. I shall save Post, the Second for tomorrow...you lucky people.